Exquisite

I'm sitting on my bed staring at the baby. I should be putting away laundry, doing the dishes, organizing the mess in the computer room, cleaning the living room....but I can't stop staring at the gorgeous, drooling bundle in my bed. I'll never have the chance again to just let the world stop and enjoy my baby. I can't imagine this beautiful, perfect baby will one day scream that he hates me, will one day leave me and will someday break my heart. What could possibly be more heart-wrenching than a child? I sometimes wonder why we become parents in the first place. I know, biologically we must repopulate, but on a purely emotional level, why would we choose this? That sounds cold, but I don't mean it like that. I mean that, especially with my older son, any hurt of his becomes my hurt. The thought of him being scared or sad becomes my pain, on top of any other pain I already had. My love for him and for the new baby is so all consuming that it makes my heart feel stretched and thin. I used to get so annoyed by women who would cry at tragic stories about children in the news. I didn't understand the problem, it wasn't their child that was hurt or killed, sure it's sad, but nothing to cry over. Something inside you breaks when you become a mother, every child becomes your child. Maybe it doesn't break, maybe it becomes complete, maybe that's how it was supposed to be all along.

The Plan

So the plan, as it stands now, is to remove the gargantuan tumor on my thyroid as well as half of the thyroid itself. This is a much better prospect than the other option that I was facing. With only taking half the thyroid, I get to keep the other half which will likely mean I don't have to take synthetic thyroid replacements (fun fact, thyroid replacement meds are made out of pig thyroid...) I also will not have to be subjected to 4 days of radioactive iodine and the subsequent banishment from civilization that mess entails. I guess they will take out the diseased half and test it one more time and if it passes the benign test, they will close me up and let me go. If they find that it was malignant after all...well, we'll deal with that later.

Future Jen has Arrived

Well, apparently I did deal with it just fine. I had yet another biopsy done and, again, it came back benign. The doctor told me the results with the caveat that we will only know for sure when the actual tumor is removed and dissected in February. Why do so many things need to be removed from my body and dissected? I'm sure it has something to do with eating lead-based paint in all the various rental properties I was raised in. At any rate, it's been an incredibly long time since I posted so here's what's new...I had something else removed from my body, but not dissected. Lane Thomas made his arrival on October 14th at 8:16 a.m. as scheduled. He is healthy and beautiful and I am so blessed to be his mother! I had a great pregnancy, for all my physical failings, I'm actually really good at being pregnant. I had a tubal ligation, so, sadly, this baby factory is closed. I felt confident in the choice to shut down production, my husband and I agreed a long time ago that we did not want more than two children. Well, he didn't want more than zero for a long time...But anyway, I had no reservations about the decision until about an hour ago when I started packing up my maternity clothes. Not being a crier, I was surprised when I started sobbing unexpectedly while folding up the shirts I'd been wearing for the past few months. I don't want to be pregnant again, I certainly don't want anymore kids, but there was such a sense of finality in that gesture. Shutting a door on an exciting and special time of my life, I guess. I will never again be pregnant. Why is this so sad? I'm not great at being a mother, kids in general stress me out. I think it's more the ending of a time period, rather than actual sadness about not having more kids. This was the last big thing, you know. I've graduated high school and college. I've had the wedding, the grown up job, bought a house, built a house and had my kids. The next milestones, the next "big things" won't be mine now, they will be my children's. Is that a selfish viewpoint? Am I sad because there won't be anymore parties or presents for me? Yeah, kinda. Being on the cusp of 30 is a strange plateau, at least in my situation. I did all the big stuff so early that there's this long expanse of horizon ahead that's just nothing but existing. But that's not so bad, there's not much chaos or uncertainty in existing. I think I'll just find comfort in that.